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This project has all the ingredients required to be extremely successful. The concept is awesome – connecting the publishers and advertiser without the middle man and his commission. People getting paid for their attention (hence basic attention token) and advertisers getting more awareness for their money while also having happy publishers who get more money as well (no middleman fees).
Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.
There's a long list of factors people may point to in an attempt to explain this. Regulators have taken a hands-off approach to bitcoin in certain markets. Dozens of new hedge funds have launched this year to trade cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. The Nasdaq and Chicago Mercantile Exchange plan to let investors trade bitcoin futures, which may attract more professional investors.
On the other hand, with bitcoin, I wouldn’t have to trust anyone at all. I would know for certain that my coins wouldn’t lose their value due to inflation as a consequence of their designed and indelible scarcity. I would also know that as I stored my coins myself, no one else, not even a bank, could actually go and spend 90% of my money, and fail to give it back to me in the event of a bank run. Furthermore, no one could forcibly confiscate my money under any circumstances, as I could always store it in such a way that it could never be retrieved except with my consent. No one would even necessarily be able to know how much money I held, unless I chose to make that information public.
A rising trend in the world of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin ATMs allow users to purchase Bitcoin with cash through machines that work almost identically to standard ATMs. With over 3,000 Bitcoin ATMs scattered across the world (primarily in large metro areas throughout North America and Europe), you can use search tools such as Google Maps or Bitcoin ATM Radar to find one close. Just remember that while Bitcoin ATMs have low processing fees, they also have a low buying limit.
The main value of cryptocurrency is capital flight. I think Bitcoin and Monero will be the big winners. Satoshi Nakamoto put the following message in the genesis block of Bitcoin:: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." Central banks have created conditions and sentiment that allowed Bitcoin to bootstrap. Without extreme monetary policy Bitcoin likely never reaches a critical mass. Bitcoin and Gold are complementary assets because multisig wallets will reduce counterparty risk.
This can all be a little confusing and James Altucher gives a great overview in his ebook Cryptocurrencies 101. The way I see it is that each cryptocurrency can be viewed as a public company. You would do your due diligence to figure out a companies potential for growth long term before investing in its stocks and James argues that the same diligence must be applied when investing in crypto. The main question to be asked here is:
Ofir Beigel, CEO of 99bitcoins.com, suggests taking a slow burn approach to the cryptocurrency market if you’re looking for the best return possible. “Keep in mind there can be a lot of ‘noise’ in the background, like short-term bad news that lead to a crash,” Beigel says. “The key is to find investments you believe will yield after X time according to your targets, and to try detaching yourself from the short-term noise.”
NEW YORK, Dec. 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grayscale Investments, LLC, in its role as agent (the "Agent") of the shareholders of record (the "Record Date Shareholders") of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX: GBTC) (the "Trust") as of November 6, 2017, announced that it has today completed the liquidation of approximately 172,501 Bitcoin Cash tokens distributed to it as Agent on November 6, 2017.
What I ended up learning was something the smartest people in the investment world had learned a long time ago. Benjamin Graham, the mentor of Warren Buffett, who became the richest man in the world by practicing the principle of value investing, has a pretty wonderful analogy that I think is worth repeating here. You should buy your stocks (or any investment, generally) like you buy your groceries — not like you buy your perfume.
It didn’t take a genius to see a clear arbitrage opportunity here, and I wrote up a quick blog post detailing this opportunity and fired out a single Facebook post telling my friends about it. From that post and just a few hours of work, I ended up earning almost 17 bitcoins entirely for free — worth over $45,000 today. I had plans to scale this strategy en masse, but singlehandedly ended up killing the program almost as soon as it started, when Coinbase finally came to its senses and realized just how much money it was hemorrhaging here with no hope for eventual recoupment (at the time, the lifetime value of the average customer was only something like $25 to Coinbase — a far cry from the $75 they were offering).
NEW YORK, Dec. 29, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grayscale Investments, LLC, the sponsor (the "Sponsor") of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX: GBTC) (the "Trust"), announced that it has today declared a distribution and established a record date for the distribution of the rights to Bitcoin Segwit2X tokens currently held by the Trust as a result of the fork in the Bitcoin blockchain on December 28, 2017 to shareholders of record ("Record Date Shareholders") as of the close of business on January 8, 2018 (the "Record Date").
This can be an interesting way to gauge the bitcoin market without all the work of getting bitcoins, but it comes at a price. Literally, you'll be paying very high premiums. The stock recently split to make things more affordable, but the premium remains steep. As of this writing, one share from GBTC is worth 0.00100396 BTC, or $6.77. Yet shares are going for $10.70. You'll also need to factor in management fees as well. As a result, some think it's more worth it to just own the bitcoins yourself.
I wrote about this on my blog. The market is only nine years old, and thus, the Crypto asset class is extremely new, and while these assets have been traded for a few years now, market conditions are continually changing. Unlike the stock market, we do not have decades of trading data to guide us. What worked a year ago might not work today, even things which worked three months ago might not work now. As new investors come into the market and liquidity improves, trading patterns are not always consistent. We must accept that nobody knows that the fuck will happen, and anyone who says so is purely speculating, and as such, it is essential that all ‘expert’ advice is taken with a pinch of salt.

Steindorff: QTUM is an emerging smart-contract platform with a strong team and promising future. You can think of QTUM as a bitcoin/ethereum hybrid in the sense that the platform enables smart contracts to be built atop bitcoin’s UTXO blockchain. This is an important technological achievement as it enables mobile and IoT compatibility for smart contract backed decentralized applications, a feature not currently available with Ethereum. Mobile compatibility will accelerate the proliferation of smart-contract adoption among businesses while simultaneously broadening its use case as a digital currency via mobile friendly QTUM wallets. Additionally, QTUM has shifted away from the Proof of Work consensus model (Bitcoin/Ethereum) and instead leverages the Proof of Stake model which rewards QTUM token owners for confirming transactions via “staking” instead of “mining.” Without getting into too many details this method is both more environmentally friendly and less prohibitive for individuals to participate than the Proof of Work method. Since launching in early 2017 QTUM has garnered a massive community throughout the Asia-Pacific and the United States. We believe the QTUM team is unrivalled in Asia and their protocol stack has the potential to become the dominant Smart Contract platform of Asia.

Once the ICO tokens are released on an exchange, prices would tend to shoot up in value – often in multiples – as there will be a huge demand stemming from those that were not able to invest during the ICO stage. A trait of popular ICOs is that they would have a whitelisting period, where you must register yourself prior to the ICO period to book a slot for the actual ICO date.
And finally, let's not forget that crypto trading is primarily comprised of short-minded retail investors. These often emotional investors don't have the wherewithal to stick around for the long term, meaning any news event could send them running for the hills. We've witnessed more than one scare with bitcoin and other large digital currencies that sent the entire crypto market tumbling, with basically no exceptions.
I am not your guru. I’m a crypto enthusiast, not a professional trader, and I make plenty of mistakes. There are a huge amount of ‘gurus’ and ‘experts’ out there but the truth is that many of them haven’t got a fucking clue what they are talking about. Opinions in cryptocurrency are like assholes, everybody’s got one. It’s extremely easy to predict the market and hell, everybody seems like an expert, when cryptocurrency is experiencing a bull run.
There's a long list of factors people may point to in an attempt to explain this. Regulators have taken a hands-off approach to bitcoin in certain markets. Dozens of new hedge funds have launched this year to trade cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. The Nasdaq and Chicago Mercantile Exchange plan to let investors trade bitcoin futures, which may attract more professional investors.
Exchanges have inbuilt online wallets to keep the cryptocurrency you purchased. However, for those who heard of the Mt. Gox hack, you might feel uneasy to put on an exchange. If you do not wish to keep your crypto holdings on the exchange, you have the option to either use a paper wallet service like myetherwallet.com or spend 99 USD on a hardware wallet like KeepKey. Both serve the purpose of removing platform risk, at the cost of taking up the responsibility of keeping your cryptocurrency safe.
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I am not your guru. I’m a crypto enthusiast, not a professional trader, and I make plenty of mistakes. There are a huge amount of ‘gurus’ and ‘experts’ out there but the truth is that many of them haven’t got a fucking clue what they are talking about. Opinions in cryptocurrency are like assholes, everybody’s got one. It’s extremely easy to predict the market and hell, everybody seems like an expert, when cryptocurrency is experiencing a bull run.
There are already a number of proposed solutions to this issue, such as the implementation of the Lightning Network, but in order to implement these solutions, the majority of bitcoin miners must agree to update their bitcoin software. Many bitcoin miners are reluctant to do so, in large part because high transaction fees are good for miners, at least on a short term basis, as it means they earn far more per each block mined. The implementation of the Lightning Network and other solutions threatens to take away this extra revenue stream. Hence, users of bitcoin and miners of bitcoin find themselves at odds with a very understandable conflict of interest. It’s unclear as of yet how this will be resolved, though it seems the community is pushing forward towards a resolution, and I’m of the personal belief that they’ll get there eventually.
"We see continued growth both in terms of the average daily volume and open interest," said Tim McCourt, group global head of equity products and alternative investments at the CME Group, a Chicago-based derivatives exchange. "The volume has steadily increased compared to when it was first launched in December. This is not a one-sided product because we have both supply and demand."
Futures are financial contracts obligating the buyer to purchase an asset or the seller to sell an asset, such as a physical commodity or a financial instrument, at a predetermined future date and price. Futures contracts detail the quality and quantity of the underlying asset; they are standardized to facilitate trading on a futures exchange. Some futures contracts may call for physical delivery of the asset, while others are settled in cash.
You’ll find that different exchanges cater to different markets. Today, most countries have at least one cryptocurrency exchange specializing in their own currency. There are exchanges that can accept New Zealand Dollars in exchange for bitcoin, for example. Other exchanges are known for certain pairs. Bithumb, for example, has particularly strong liquidity in the ETH/KRW (South Korean Won) pair at the moment (and it’s easily the most popular cryptocurrency exchange in Korea).

What’s also striking is that traditionally, these sorts of ‘angel or seed’ investments in new technologies have been closed off to all but an incredibly well connected inner circle of elite high net-worth individuals and institutions. Peter Thiel, for instance, was only approached to become Facebook’s first outside investor because he was already incredibly well known within Silicon Valley for having founded and sold PayPal for over a billion dollars. In contrast, with bitcoin, a random student in Norway was able to invest just $27 and make millions.

"We see continued growth both in terms of the average daily volume and open interest," said Tim McCourt, group global head of equity products and alternative investments at the CME Group, a Chicago-based derivatives exchange. "The volume has steadily increased compared to when it was first launched in December. This is not a one-sided product because we have both supply and demand."
Debit cards, on the other hand, allow you to buy cryptocurrencies available on the platform pretty much instantaneously. Simply by transferring funds from that card to the platform, you can purchase cryptocurrency in an instant. However, debit cards cannot be used to sell crypto, to deposit money in one’s account, or to withdraw money from one’s Coinbase account. On Coinbase, debit cards can be used exclusively to purchase crypto, and even then, only in smaller amounts. With a debit card, the limit is much lower than with a bank account ($1,125). It should be noted, though, that limits are, or can be, increased by purchasing cryptocurrency and spending a particular amount of money in doing so, either from a bank account or a debit card.
On June 26, the SEC revealed a proposal to ease the approval process and “modernize the regulatory framework for exchange-traded funds.” Most notably, the proposal stated that the “cost and delay of obtaining an exemptive order” during application would be eliminated, lowering the market barrier to entry for innovative new ETFs backed by cryptocurrencies.
Similarly, if you were able to bet at 1:2 odds (meaning if you bet $100 and win, you get $200) that a coin would yield heads, this would also be very +EV (positive expected value). The coin would still yield heads half the time, but that half of the time, you would earn $200, and the other half of the time, you would only lose $100. Hence, repeating this bet an infinite number of times would allow you to dramatically earn more money than you lost yet again.
The simplest example is flipping a coin. This will yield heads 50% of the time, and tails 50% of the time. Expected value of betting on the coin yielding heads, hence, is 0. This is because in any one given flip, the coin has exactly a 50% chance of coming up heads. Hence, if you bet $100 on the coin coming up heads an infinite number of times, your expected gain, or value, from such an action, is to be $0.
This is the method i’m predominantly using and involves trading bitcoin through a company called USI TECH. The idea here is simple. You lend out bitcoins to USI and they return you on average 1% of what you’ve given them every day for 140 business days. E.g. If you start with 1 bitcoin, after 140 business days you should have close to 1.4 btc simple enough right?
MintChip – Unlike most cryptocurrencies, MintChip is actually the creation of a government institution, specifically the Royal Canadian Mint. MintChip is a smartcard that holds electronic value and can transfer it securely from one chip to another. Like Bitcoin, MintChip does not need personal identification; unlike Bitcoin, it is backed by a physical currency, the Canadian dollar.
Recommendations and Information found on Cryptopotato are those of writers quoted. It does not represent the opinions of Cryptopotato on whether to buy, sell or hold any investments. Investors should be cautious about any recommendations given. All investors are advised to conduct their own independent research into individual coins before making a purchase decision. Use information at your own risk.
These are tokens built on one of the above mentioned platforms. They give access to a specific blockchain application, and are designed for a specific task. Utility tokens are not really my cup of tea yet, as they’re extremely risky due to two things. It’s still too early for mass adoption of these utilities because the technology is not ready yet (Ethereum’s scalability issues, for example), and because we don’t know what platforms will actually become the blockchain backbone of the digital world.
Through critical early investments not just in Bitcoin, but Ethereum, Qtum, EOS, and several other now high profile digit assets and companies, Steindorff's first fund significantly outperformed Bitcoin's 1000%+ gain from 2014 to date. He and several other prominent early crypto investors and entrepreneurs have now partnered to launch Distributed Global, one of the most pedigreed crypto / digital asset funds in existence. With Bitcoin finally exploding past and oscillating around the $10k mark this week, Kevin Harris from SumZero sat down with Johnny to discuss Bitcoin, crypto funds, and the future of blockchain technology.
Cryptocurrencies have attracted the attention of several investors all over the world. But in general, institutions did not participate in the market. Back in August, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which operates an important number of regulated exchanges all over the world, announced its intention to launch a new institutional-grade crypto platform known as Bakkt.
Bitcoin is also dramatically cheaper to use than almost any other form of international money transfer today. Already, for this use case alone, it proves its worth over current dominant international money transfer solutions, such as Western Union. I can transfer money to anyone in the world, in any amount, and have them receive it without moving a finger in just a few minutes. For this privilege, I have to pay just a few cents, no matter how much I’m sending, instead of a huge proportional percentage, with hefty minimum fees and surcharges.
“It’s a little cliched, but it’s important to understand that when trading, your first goal should be to not lose money. If you’re not losing money, you’re making money, and you can start to strive for better returns. The market isn’t perfect, and being able to recognize when to cut losses and when to take profits will ensure that you have better long term results with fewer risks.”

NEW YORK, Oct. 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grayscale Investments, LLC, the sponsor (the "Sponsor") of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX:GBTC) (the "Trust"), announced today that it has requested withdrawal of its Registration Statement on Form S-1 (File No. 333-215627) that was initially filed on January 20, 2017 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed public offering of its shares. The Registration Statement has not been declared effective, and no securities have been sold in connection with the offering described in the Registration Statement. Withdrawal of the Registration Statement does not impact quotation of the Trust's shares on the OTCQX.

For instance, if two parties decide to make a bet on Donald Trump winning the election, historically, this could only be done by either word of honor or by some ad hoc legal contract. For a say, small $100 bet, it would be absolutely a non-starter to pursue legal action in the case that one of the parties decided to renege on the deal in the aftermath of the election. Normally, the reneged-upon party would simply be left in the dust without recourse.
This project has all the ingredients required to be extremely successful. The concept is awesome – connecting the publishers and advertiser without the middle man and his commission. People getting paid for their attention (hence basic attention token) and advertisers getting more awareness for their money while also having happy publishers who get more money as well (no middleman fees).

Steindorff: Distributed Global Fund II is a long-only, stage agnostic investor in protocols. We invest in the tokens of established protocols and in the seed and pre-ICO rounds of early stage protocols. In either case, we look for protocols that are well positioned to capture market share from centralized incumbents. The protocols we invest in share three common traits: they are tokenized, open source and decentralized. We believe protocols with these characteristics represent a paradigm shift in how human economic behavior is organized and incentivized. This shift has the potential to fundamentally alter many of the world’s largest industries, and create investment opportunities that are desirable for thoughtful, long-term investors. It is important to note that we don’t employ leverage and we seek to be tax efficient, our investors are looking for broad exposure to this new digital asset class while reducing taxable events, transaction costs and exposure to unnecessary risks.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are continuing to rise in popularity, drawing both first-time and experienced investors. While the process to buy and sell Bitcoin has been simplified over the past few years, many people still find it confusing. With banks, credit card issuers, and governments worldwide getting involved with rules and regulations on how the currency can be bought and used, it’s no wonder some people are wary to invest in cryptocurrencies.

“It’s a little cliched, but it’s important to understand that when trading, your first goal should be to not lose money. If you’re not losing money, you’re making money, and you can start to strive for better returns. The market isn’t perfect, and being able to recognize when to cut losses and when to take profits will ensure that you have better long term results with fewer risks.”
NEW YORK, Dec. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grayscale Investments, LLC, the sponsor (the "Sponsor") of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX: GBTC) (the "Trust"), announced that it has irrevocably abandoned (i) all of the rights to Bitcoin Diamond tokens currently held by the Trust as a result of the fork in the Bitcoin blockchain on November 24, 2017 and (ii) all of the rights to Bytether tokens currently held by the Trust as a result of the fork in the Bitcoin blockchain on August 1, 2017.
With things like brain wallets possible, this means that even in the worst case scenario, you can literally store your bitcoins in your brain and nowhere else, and thereby easily prevent their confiscation. Just yet another fundamental innovation in the evolution of currency that bitcoin has made possible — its fully intangible nature is actually an asset.
Furthermore, I would be forced to use an intermediary financial institution such as a bank to hold my money for me, and thereby expose myself to yet another layer of required trust and accompanying risk. I would also be aware that these institutions would almost certainly practice fractional reserve banking to the maximum extent they could get away with it, such that they would be extremely fragile to small perturbations and vulnerable to things like bank runs and runaway systemic banking collapses.
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You can trade immediately as much as you want by sending a wire (only applicable for US customers) to your account following their deposit instructions. There’s a $10 fee for this that GDAX charges, on top of whatever your bank charges to send wire transactions. This is the fastest method to deposit any amount of money you want and trade immediately with no limits, but not the cheapest.
While Goldman Sachs’ skeptical stance on crypto “remains intact,” the investment bank’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein has suggested that the adoption of crypto like Bitcoin could happen in a similar way as that of paper money, which replaced gold and silver coins. In an interview in June, Blankfein stated that it is “too arrogant” to argue that crypto cannot be adopted on a large scale only because it is “uncomfortable” or “unfamiliar.”
It is important to note that some altcoins innovate by experimenting with useful characteristics Bitcoin does not offer. For instance, Ripple serves as a protocol users can employ to make inter-currency payments with ease, BitShares describes itself as “a fair version of Wall Street,” and Darkcoin hopes to provide a platform for completely anonymous transactions. Some altcoin ecosystems, such as Mastercoin and CounterParty, even utilize the Bitcoin blockchain to secure their platform.
Any cryptocurrency other than bitcoin is referred to as an altcoin. Remember, you should treat cryptocurrencies as if you were a VC looking to invest in a startup. You’d invest in the startup that would have the greatest chance of succeeding because it provides a unique benefit to the world that will continue to be useful in the long run. The main wallet i’m using to invest in altcoins is CoinSpot because it gives me the option of purchasing a plethora of cryptocurrencies from just one account.
“It’s a little cliched, but it’s important to understand that when trading, your first goal should be to not lose money. If you’re not losing money, you’re making money, and you can start to strive for better returns. The market isn’t perfect, and being able to recognize when to cut losses and when to take profits will ensure that you have better long term results with fewer risks.”
A conservative strategy is to wait until a price starts going back up to buy and then wait until it starts coming back down to sell. You’ll miss part of the run and you’ll miss your chance to sell at the highest possible price, but you’ll be taking safer bets a lot of the time if you wait for some confirmation of an uptrend or downtrend. This is generally true even though you could end up missing some buying opportunities this way.
Design issues. Despite Bitcoin's massive rise in popularity over the past several years, it is not immune to design problems. For example, starting late last year Bitcoin transaction speeds became very slow because of a scaling problem related to the way the Bitcoin blockchain works. (You can read the details here.) That issue did not end up creating the existential crisis for Bitcoin that some analysts predicted, and the problem has now more or less been solved via something called SegWit. Still, the Bitcoin scaling issue was a reminder that a new type of serious problem may creep up in the future that undoes Bitcoin.
Secure Investment is a private high yield investment program, backed up by Forex market trading and investing in various funds and activities. Profits from these investments are used to enhance our program and increase its stability for the long term. This is one of the most secure and convenient investment program on the Internet. You can choose your investment hours from home, office or anywhere in the world. All you need is an e-Currency account and a personal computer with Internet access. Secure Investment Ltd. currently maintains several different investments plans.
Utility value: when determining if a cryptocurrency will be here in a few years from now, we have to ask ourselves, is the cryptocurrency useful? Does it have a users’ market? This question is important because it is the most useful cryptocurrencies that are likely to be widely adopted. Take Ethereum for example, its utility value derives from its function of allowing developers to build Decentralized Applications (DApps) on top of its blockchain. We can conclude that, as long as Ethereum is the go-to-place for DApp development, it is likely to maintain, and possibly increase, its utility value. Therefore, Ethereum would be a viable cryptocurrency to include in our portfolio.
The recent weeks, however, saw a shift in this previously serene mental landscape, as new considerations about crypto futures began to pour into media space with increased frequency. From allegations of massively suppressing crypto prices to a widening range of platforms offering crypto derivatives to a real prospect of Ethereum futures coming about soon, these developments point to the need of revisiting the realm of cryptocurrency-based futures. Now that these derivatives have been around for more than half a year, a more nuanced picture of this asset class’ role in crypto finance is emerging.